the third of our days on the river wasn’t what you could call exciting. it started out hot and got hotter. it wasn’t so bad for collins and me, but mark tidd and jiggins fried. we kept on, though. jiggins said he was tired of being where he couldn’t get a square meal, and, heat or no heat, he was going to get where there was food in large quantities.
we traveled the same way we did the day before—that is, mark and jiggins in the boat and collins and me in the canoe. along toward the middle of the morning we saw a farm-house back about a quarter of a mile from the river. jiggins pointed.
“milk,” says he. “home-made bread. um. pickles. did you hear that? pickles. seems like i couldn’t get along without a pickle. a long pickle. maybe sweet, maybe sour—i don’t care.”
mark looked excited. “pie,” says he. “i bet they got p-p-pie. cherry-pie! l-l-let’s stop.”
collins looked at me and grinned, and i looked at collins and grinned. it was funny the way both those fat folks did let their minds run to eating. not that i would have thrown a piece of pie into the river if somebody had offered it to me, and collins wasn’t the sort of fellow to use a glass of fresh milk to wash his face with, but it was more—what d’you call it?—incidental-like with us. with them it was about the most important thing there was. i’d like to enjoy something the way mark tidd enjoys eating. i’ve heard it makes you dull to eat a lot, but it didn’t work that way with mark. he always could think better after he’d eaten a meal big enough to keep a family two days.
of course, we went ashore. there would have been a rebellion right there if we hadn’t. we walked back through the low ground and found a lane running up to the house. it led to the barn-yard and around a low shed where the farmer kept his wagon. where it went we went. we straggled around the corner of that shed into the yard, and then we stopped. we stopped sudden and short, and everybody said something startled, for there, coming toward us like he meant business and a good deal of it, was the biggest white bulldog i ever saw. maybe he looked bigger than he was, but, allowing for that, he was plenty big.
i don’t know what the rest did. right there binney jenks was a pretty busy kid with no time to fool with anybody. i turned and went up the fence and scrambled on top of that shed so quick it must have looked like i did it in one jump. collins was about a tenth of a second behind me. mark and jiggins, being so fat, weren’t quite as quick, but they did considerable moving when you take everything into consideration. both of them were on the fence and the dog was jumping at their feet. mark got on the shed next, and that left nobody but jiggins in reach. i never saw a dog put his mind to getting a man the way that bulldog did. he acted like it was necessary for him to have a chunk of jiggins, and it looked, too, as though he was going to come pretty close to getting what he was after.
collins and i sat still. we were sort of startled out of our wits, i guess, but not mark. he was busy the minnit he got on the roof. by luck there was a long pole up there—about twenty feet long, i guess; mark grabbed it and crouched at the very edge of the roof. then mister dog jumped for jiggins. maybe you don’t think he was a surprised animal! just as he jumped mark poked, and he poked good and hard. the pole took the dog in the ribs, and you could hear him say, “urgh,” or something like that. he went kerflop and head over heels.
“h-h-hurry up!” says mark to jiggins.
jiggins hurried.
the dog wasn’t through, though. he took two more licks at jiggins before the fat man could clamber onto the shed, and then sat down and scowled at us. if he couldn’t get us he was going to see we didn’t get away.
it was sort of funny. i looked over at mark and says, “how d’you like the pie?”
he grinned. “guess they p-put p-p-pepper in it by mistake,” says he.
“doesn’t look as if anybody was home,” says collins, who had been looking at the house.
we all looked then, and, sure enough, the house was all closed up. most likely everybody had gone to town and left the dog to look after things. they picked the right one to leave, all right. there wasn’t anybody who could have done better.
well, there we were, four of us on a roof, with the sun beating down like sixty, with nothing to drink and nothing to eat, and no chance that we could see of getting down before the folks who lived there got home. that’s what comes of thinking about your stomach all the time. if appetites hadn’t been invented we never would have met that dog, and he was an acquaintance i would have been perfectly willing not to have known.
ten minnits before that jiggins and collins were our enemies. if ever you have one you want to make an ally of, i recommend a bulldog and the hot top of a shed. we were partners in a second. we might be enemies again after we got down, but while we were there we were one tight combination. all we thought was bulldog, and what to say to him to persuade him we weren’t meant for food. he was stubborn, though. it didn’t matter what we said or how kindly we spoke to him or argued with him, he wouldn’t change his mind. if we couldn’t be inside him he had it figgered out we were in the next best place, and he’d keep us there. he was unreasonable about it.
“let’s holler,” i says.
“n-no use,” says mark. “nobody to hear you. there hain’t another house in sight.”
“wish we had a gun,” says collins, with one eye on the bulldog.
“wouldn’t shoot him if we had,” says jiggins. “certainly not. no fault of his. doing his duty. good dog. like to own him. our fault, eh? we came in his yard. who asked us? nobody did. well?”
come to think of it, we didn’t have much right to complain about that dog. he was doing what his master told him to do, and he was making a good job of it.
“we’ve got to do something,” says collins, with sweat trickling down his nose. “we can’t stay here all day.”
“l-l-looks like we couldn’t do anything else,” says mark. and jiggins grinned.
“there must be some way of coaxin’ doggie to let us down,” i says.
“oh,” says collins, “he’ll let us down, all right. the trouble is, what will he do when we’ve got down?”
mark sat down and pulled his hat over his eyes. he had his cheek between his thumb and finger and was pinching it so it looked white.
“thinkin’,” says i to collins. “he’ll git us down. you see.”
collins just grinned sort of sickly. he didn’t seem to have any great confidence in mark, but then he didn’t know mark as well as i did.
after a few minnits mark got up and walked to the edge of the shed away from the dog. he stood there measuring with his eye how far it was to a sort of lean-to against the side of the barn. i went over and looked, too. it must have been twelve or fifteen feet—too far to jump, by considerable.
“great if we had a bridge,” says i.
“there’s m-m-more ways of crossin’ a river than on a b-b-bridge,” says he.
“yes,” i told him, “you can wade. but the wadin’ hain’t very healthy right here.”
“hum!” says he, and turned around to where he laid the pole he had used to poke the dog with. “h-how’d that do?” he asked me.
“nobody could walk across it or even crawl across, and if you were to hang by your hands and go over that way the dog ’u’d get your legs.”
“binney,” says mark, patronizing-like, “what were you and tallow and plunk doing in plunk’s back yard all last week?”
i thought back and remembered we’d been pole-vaulting. i said so.
“well?” says mark.
all of a sudden it hit me. i felt pretty cheap, too. there i was, the fellow that was interested in pole-vaulting and things like that, and here the first time in my life it really would have come in handy i overlooked it altogether. but my head isn’t like mark’s. he stores up in his everything he sees, thinking maybe he can use it some day.
“i kin vault across, i guess,” i told him, “but you and jiggins never could. the pole hain’t built that wouldn’t bust under you.”
“we don’t n-need to,” says he.
“what’s this?” collins asked. he and jiggins had been talking on the other side of the roof and hadn’t heard what was going on.
“binney says he can v-vault onto that other shed,” says mark.
“what of it?”
“can you do it?” mark asked me.
i didn’t like it very well, i’ll admit. first, there was the dog to get me if i missed; second, the place i was to land wasn’t level, but sloping; and the third, i couldn’t get a very good start from the roof we were on. but i couldn’t own up i was afraid before folks, so i up and says i’d be tickled to death.
“but what good’ll that do?” collins asked.
“binney’ll get through that l-l-little window into the barn,” says mark. “there’s always rope in a barn. he’ll get that and throw it over to me. then i’ll l-l-lasso the dog.”
“um,” says jiggins. “good scheme. ought to have thought of it myself. but i didn’t. quick, ain’t he? eh? quicker’n a flash.”
“gimme the pole,” says i.
i went to the edge of the roof and looked across. it looked about a mile, now that i had to vault it, and the ground seemed like it was fifty-seven feet away. also the dog, seeing we were fooling around that edge of the roof, strolled around and was sitting there looking up at me with an expression i didn’t like. it wasn’t what you could call inviting.
i poked my pole out to the ground in the middle. it reached that far, all right. the only question was whether i had the strength to swing myself all the way across. i saw i’d have to take a run to do it.
running on that sloping, slippery roof didn’t look much like i’d have any luck doing it. but mark saved the day. i might have known he’d foresee that difficulty.
“t-t-take off your shoes,” says he.
easy, wasn’t it? all you have to do is think of it, and there isn’t anything to it at all. but somehow nobody thought of it but mark.
i slipped off my shoes, measured on the pole where i ought to grip it, and went to the far end of the shed. mark and jiggins and collins were looking at me with their faces sort of set and their jaws square. i grinned at them, though i didn’t feel much like grinning.
“here goes,” says i, and i ran across that roof as tight as i could let it. my pole landed good and solid right between the two sheds and i swung out and over. i could feel the pole bending under me, and i could hear the dog growl and come for it, but i didn’t look down. there wasn’t time. that other roof seemed to be shooting out at me, so i just lifted up my feet and went bang down on it. if it hadn’t been for the pole i’d have slid off onto the ground, but i held it tight and scrambled to my feet. i was considerable skinned up, but it didn’t hurt any, because i felt so good because i’d got across. i was sort of proud of it. mark was standing right at the edge of the other roof, and you never saw anybody look so relieved. when he spoke his voice was sort of husky and he stuttered like anything.
my pole landed good and solid right between the two sheds, and i swung out and over
“b-b-b-bully for you, b-binney,” says he, and then stopped sudden. it made me feel good, i can tell you, to have him say that and to know he’d been worried about me. when you know a fellow like mark tidd it makes you pretty glad when you’re sure he really likes you. and a word of praise from him means a lot, because he don’t praise very often.
“can you open the window?” says collins, after he and jiggins had added onto what mark said about my doing a good job.
i tried. it shoved up easy, and i threw my leg over the sill. “so long,” i called to them and ducked inside.
it was the harness-room i landed in, all smelly with leather and grease, and sort of dim so i couldn’t see very well to get around. i stood still to let my eyes get used to it, and then looked for a rope. there didn’t seem to be any there, so i opened the door and went out into the big room of the barn. over opposite were the stalls, and in one of them was a horse. it was one of those big, square box-stalls, and that accounts for the horse sticking his nose out toward me and whickering. i like horses. dogs are all right, but for real friendship and usefulness and all-around bullyness give me a horse. if i was a millionaire i’d have as many as barnum’s circus.
i couldn’t help going over to speak to this fellow. he whickered again, inviting-like, and i let the rope go awhile till i could have a little talk with him. he stretched out his nose to me, and i patted it. then i stopped and craned my neck to look at his legs, for his face seemed mighty familiar. there was a sort of white triangle on his nose, and if he had two white feet that meant he was a horse i was interested in particular. so i craned my neck over like i said before, and, sure enough, there were the white feet.
“well, alfred,” says i, pretty nearly flabbergasted to see him, “what you doin’ here?”
alfred never said a word, but nuzzled at me and begged for a lump of sugar.
“alfred,” says i, “where’s uncle hieronymous alphabet bell, and when d’you expect him back here?”
of course, he couldn’t tell me, but just his being there was enough to let on uncle hieronymous couldn’t be many miles away. uncle wouldn’t have left his horse where he couldn’t get to see him often. he probably was boarding alfred here while he worked on the river.
“well,” says i to myself, “what had i better do?”
when you get in a place where you aren’t sure what to do next, don’t do anything. i just stood there and patted alfred and figgered. the more i figgered the more muddled i got, and i sure did wish mark tidd was there to talk it over with. but he wasn’t. i had to depend on myself this time.
i thought so long i bet those folks out on the hot top of the shed thought i’d got lost or eaten up, but i wasn’t worrying about them just then. i let them do the worrying. anyhow, two of them were enemies, and that made the unpleasantness two to one. mark should have been willing to stand that, shouldn’t he? wouldn’t you be willing to be uncomfortable if you could see two enemies being just as uncomfortable alongside? well, maybe you wouldn’t. likely i didn’t see it the same way mark did, for the barn was cool and comfortable.
i couldn’t make up my mind what i ought to do, so i went hunting for a rope again. i found a good long one and slung it over my shoulder. then i went back into the harness-room after saying good-by to alfred, and scrambled through the window onto the roof of the shed.
mark and jiggins and collins were looking pretty tired out and impatient.
